RF-ID systems are increasingly being used for more and a wider range of applications. In a typical RF-ID system, an interrogator transmits an interrogation TV signal, X to a transponder, within read range of the interrogator, and the transponder responds by transmitting it's identification number either by backscattering the interrogation signal, in a full duplex mode, or by the transponder actually transmitting it's identification signal after being powered up by the interrogation signal in a half duplex mode. RF-ID technology has found a niche in the security market. Transponders are easily attached to security badges, toll tags, or gate passes to allow/prohibit access or even provide automatic billing services, i.e. toll roads and parking garages, and readers are as readily constructed into toll booths, and doorways. On an even smaller scale, RF-ID systems can provide security and tracking capabilities for a wide variety of goods. Warehouses, libraries, and manufacturing plants are all potential venues with regard to the tracking aspect of RF-ID systems. However, with respect to the security aspect of RF-ID systems, the tracking and security of Secret or Top Secret government documents, is one of the areas which focuses on allowing or prohibiting access to a physical object, i.e. document. An even further extension from tracking and securing an object, is to allow only copyrighted objects, i.e. Digital Video Disk (DVD) and Digital Videocassette (DV) to be played on players, i.e. DVD players.
The current methodologies available for exercising copyright/anti-tape protections can be characterized as mostly deterrents constituting little more than "Warning Labels". This program material is mostly analog, "branded" multimedia content such as prerecorded VHS tapes of major studio motion pictures, CDs, cassettes, broadcast movies via cable/satellite channels, etc. Recording artists, major studios and the like have tolerated such inadequate safeguards because until recently the copied product resultant was degraded in quality sufficiently such that it could not duplicate the quality of the original Master material itself.
As digital content media replaces the analog content and gets rolled out in the next year or two, with the advent of Digital Video Disk (DVD) and Digital Videocassette, the content owners would like to see a better fool-proof technical approach to prevent unauthorized copying and redistribution of digital content media.